Heads Upby S Shane Thomas

Their new home world was similar to Earth in size,
temperature, biological diversity, and landscape. The colonial starship settled
itself into a gorge carved out at the base of a mountain stream. A lush jungle
crept right up to the baseball field Ramsey Vanderbilt and his friends claimed
from the new frontier. Despite being born and raised in an egg shaped city
traversing through space, Ramsey and his peers developed an instant fondness
for the outdoors.

Jimmy Schmidt hit the foul ball that led to Ramsey’s amazing
discovery. Ramsey rooted through dense growth looking for the stray ball. What
he found at first was a yellow creature the size of his thumb. It scuttled
upright on two stick legs and held a smaller creature in one of its pincers, a
meal produced from a successful hunt. Its head looked like an ant save for eyes
that revealed intelligence unlike the insects he knew from afternoons spent in
the colony’s Earth Habitat areas.

“Hurry up Vanderbilt!”

“You guys, look at this little thing!” Ramsey replied.

The little yellow hunter took an equal fascination to its
big observers. It emitted a strange high pitched noise and soon a small yellow
crowd gathered about to look at their human boy observers. Ramsey, Jimmy, and
the gang felt they hand stumbled upon a truly remarkable species. The better
part of an hour was spent in admiration of the yellow creatures.

Ramsey’s communicator chirped and the boys dispersed to
their homes for supper without a second thought for the whiffle ball which had
become the object of the yellow tribe’s attention.

The following afternoon Ramsey and the gang searched the
brush near the field for their mislaid ball. What they found was the home of
their little yellow acquaintances. Small huts were formed from the skulls of
animals the size of an orange. Bits of
thatch and mud mortared roofs and corridors as needed. Among the skeletal
metropolis their whiffle ball formed a new addition. One of the little hunters indicated the
domicile and gestured what Ramsey understood to be gratitude. Then it indicated
a small sun bleached skull off to one side.

The boys made a routine of procuring cups, hollow spheres,
and the like to provide exotic construction materials for the strange little
companions. Soon all the boys sported a collection of skulls on their dressers
and bookshelves. Since their supply of hollow whiffle balls had long been
exhausted the gang now played with solid baseballs and aluminum bats. Ramsey
set his helmet, glove, bat, and ball aside to spend a couple minutes with his
strange yellow companions.

“Where have you left all your new baseball gear?” the boy’s
mother asked when he returned home.

“Oh by the little pincher men, I’ll go get it right now”
Ramsey replied.

“It can wait until tomorrow mister. Dinner time is family
time and I made a casserole.”

The next afternoon Ramsey pushed back into the brush and
huffed as he saw that his helmet had become the biggest house on the little
block. The boy wondered how much allowance he would need to replace it, mother
would not let him play without one. He saw the handle of his bat behind a patch
of grass and trotted over to collect the remainder of his gear.

The boy stood stock still, frozen by shock and
stared at the empty sockets of a human skull amid his bat, gloves, and ball.